Extremely polished game! Loved theme, graphics and music. The patterns were cool too. Overall an extremely solid entry for the JAM, one of my favourites I should say!

I only have a single issue that has irritated me quite a lot. I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but I keep getting game over’d for no apparent reason in the middle of the boss fight, even though I have lots of hearts left. I’m playing on Normal Mode so I don’t think it’s the “10 seconds shooting and you die” mechanic. I also tried stopping shooting every 10 seconds anyway just in case, but I was still getting killed without anything hitting me. So I’m quite clueless what is the cause.

Really awesome game! It takes the bullet hell theme and changes it into a fun, fast paces dodge the enemies game. I love it! The art is super nice, it reminds me of a game I played on a ps2 a while back.

One thing I can say is that when you die, there should be a reset button instead of it taking you back to the main menu.

Awesome entry though!

I love the spooky theme of this game, really fits well in every aspect!

The gameplay is also no joke - The player hitbox is super clear, the firing rate is really tasteful, the hit feedback of enemies and their death animations are amazingly satisfying and the enemy patterns are really inventive and full of personality. The death animation is also really well invented. But who can forget the "IMMA FIRING MAH LASER" moment when you stop firing for 10 seconds? SUPER satisfying, and amazing use of theme!

The only complaint I have is with the first warning of the game about gamepad controls. First of all, this is a jam, which you should consider that most people are probably using a keyboard, so saying that the game is gamepad only may scare them away (which by the way supports other controls either way). In addition, there is too much text in that warning to read in such a short period it stays, had to reset the game 2 times to read it properly, also the font does not help much for clear understanding...

One thing you could do to prevent that, is to do it like the Yakuza games do for their ports on PC, on Yakuza 0 for example, the game starts with a screen with a gamepad image and below it is written: "Real Yakuza use a gamepad", which it implies that other controls could be used but the best experience is achieved using a gamepad, it is simple and short but conveys the message well.

I've been looking forward to playing this one as soon as I saw the spooky art theme (which i love the art in this!)  This is a very, very impressive entry and especially amazing considering the short amount of time.  Gameplay was very polished and very fun!  The music was awesome too!  Overall amazing work! :D

Everything in this game is extremely polished. Very impressive! It was very fun trying to figure CURSED mode out. A few personal impressions about the stage design:

- Making the mini-boss completely immune to the 10s beam is a bit counterintuitive given that the actual boss is extremely vulnerable to it. Makes the boss fight feel anticlimactic, and also felt like a cheap way to take ~8 hearts away from the player. I don't know how to fix this within the framework, though -- perhaps the boss fight can be reworked to involve more regular enemies for healing?

- It could be made more obvious when the player dies to the 2min timer. The first few times I died to it (see immunity to beam above), I was completely oblivious why.

- The player shouldn't be able to gain as much life as they do right now from using the beam, as it renders the early sections completely irrelevant for survival -- simply beam the enemies before the mini-boss and you're back to full.

- I never really understood how scoring worked. I see that there is a multiplier but there is no indication what made the number go up or down. This should probably be explained somewhere. In the end, I got 125m (or was it 129?), which I assume is a pretty low number, but I have no idea how should I go about to improve it. Ah, I figured it out! It's just the level of your weapon. Up to 170 now. Regardless, I feel like this could be explained in the game description.

Those are just my personal feelings, and by no means criticism. This is a wonderful game for a jam regardless of all the points above. Great work!

Top tier visuals and good level design.

Some areas for improvement: 

• It feels a little too harsh to lose a level when taking damage, maybe make a pick up that bounce around like in Cave games?
• Why do I lose 2 hearts when getting damaged?
• Feels like the boss is way too hard without the 10s beam. Tbh it’s a little too much to not shoot for 10s in the level, feels like the game becomes less interesting when using it.

Easily at the top of the jam, pretty much everything about this game is impressive and polished.

I've got a bit of feedback though, some design decisions I would've done a different way:

• Lifestealing distance is way close, and sometimes I wouldn't have skulls to lifesteal from which sort of leaves me screwed.
• Bullets from skulls/rotating swords are way small and they blend in with the background too when they fade darker. Kept getting hit by them without noticing.
• Skull firing pattern seems irregular which makes lifesteal more of a risk than it should, I'd say.
• I assume this is a bug, since I see there's bullet clear on hit which I appreciate, but, sometimes I'll get hit by a bullet and colliding with a skull at once (when trying to lifesteal), and lose 2 hearts at once.

Very impressive for a jam game, incredible visuals and audio. The stage construction and patterns are really solid as well.
So difficult I couldn't manage to beat the boss on either mode, but it was frustrating/addicting enough that I tried for well over 10 (20?) times. Feel like I'm missing something in the relationship between the mechanics even though I'm pretty sure I understood all of them, including the healing.
Like they've said before, the swords coming from below and the tiny bullets feel very unfair and unpredictable. I have no idea what to do with the boss pattern that uses these bullets. A slow button would've been nice.

Really nice visuals, audio is great and shoot 'em up style is really satisfying. I really like how theme was incorporated in cursed mode. Overall, very polished game and I had a lot of fun playing it. Great job!

Quite well done traditional shmup! Love the presentation & ghastly theme. The normal mode's 10 second "hyper charge" implementation was pretty lackluster since it takes forever and goes against the caravan-y mechanics, but CURSED mode is a lot more interesting and should have probably been the main feature despite how strict and punishing it is. The only complaints I have are pretty small like the very slow movement speed, those tiny green bullets that are needlessly difficult to see/track and the nasty swords coming from behind with no warning. Very impressive & fun overall

Super polished presentation and sound i gotta say, and i like the little castlevania inspired loading which is fitting for a game where you play as a bat XD

pretty interesting mechanic to have made a super shot on a 10 sec charge when you stop shooting altogether that's a clever use of the theme

Solid overall and i don't know what more i could add, had a fun time.

Good job to you guys :)

Pretty fun shmup with interesting incentives to not shoot the entire time. Presentation is also excellent. Only complaints are that the green diamond bullets used by the sword enemies are really small and hard to see, and the player’s non-shooting speed feels a tad bit sluggish considering you are already forced to slow down while shooting.

Love it! I really liked the implementation of the 10 seconds theme in this one, I wished that I could turn down the sfx volume in addition to music volume, because the bat was screeching pretty loud :P

Really nice job, I very much enjoyed it

Loved it! the 2min counter makes it really addictive, we always want to go further haha. The music is really good too, and the sfx are ICONIC. I love every one of them (the voice of the big bat at the end made me smile hard haha). Congratulations, you have my heart ^^ (also I saw that it's your first BH game, so congrats with that, what a great way to start)

Awesome game! I played quite a lot of rounds, trying to lift the curse. Unfortunately I just couldn't get past the big bat :(

The 10 second mechanic feels really great, as others said the risk-reward of it is cool. But additionally it also provides replayability: When I failed, I tried to figure out at what times it makes sense to charge the special attack. Leveling up feels very satisfying. Great job!

I'm so impressed by the quality and polish of everything on your game! It looks and feels great, and I really like the ten second ceasefire mechanic; it's risk-reward to such a high degree.

Amazing job! I loved the game.

Really great work on this game! Art and audio are amazing. The 10 second mechanic is quite difficult to use but very rewarding. Starts getting especially fun once the levels start building up and you shoot more bullets. Very fun to play!

Really AMAZING Game. The art and animation is some of the best I've ever seen in a jam game. The gameplay is difficult, yet a masterpiece.  I really enjoyed shooting everything down, then seeing the whole screen wipe as i use the special ability. Jay, Harry, Steve. All of you outdone yourselves with everything you done. Great, GREAT Job